After making your favorite pizza in your brick pizza oven, you would notice some food and grease-causing stains and spills. It’s important to clean them immediately. Else, the stains sink in and become more challenging to clean off your oven.
The downside of a dirty oven ranges from affecting your pizza oven’s performance to the taste of your food. So, if you want to enjoy a delicious pizza with your friends and family, it’s best to know how to clean a brick pizza oven.
While this process is not an easy peasy task, especially for first-timers, here are simple tips and tricks to help your waltz through.
Why You Should Clean Your Pizza Oven
Ensuring your pizza oven has an extended lifespan and improved efficiency hinges on proper maintenance and your cleaning routine. Keeping your pizza-making machine clean supports creating mouthwatering recipes without preventing spills, foul odors, or stains from ruining the delight.
Dirty ovens are one of the underlying culprits of nasty and strange-tasting pizzas. There’s no other way to say it – a dirty pizza oven will ruin the quality of your food.
Quick Tips on How to Clean a Pizza Oven
Avoid Cleaning your Pizza Oven When Hot
There’s an equivocation that cleaning your pizza oven when hot makes it easier to get the job done. The device is still scorching hot and unsafe to touch or handle. We strongly recommend cooks avoid cleaning immediately when they’re done cooking.
Brick ovens cook your pizza at extreme temperatures, and cleaning the device instantly is predisposed to burning your cleaning equipment or scalding your skin.
In lieu of this, you want to allow the blazing hot brick pizza oven to cool down before you commence your cleaning routine. Keep in mind that some models take longer than others to cool down to a much safer temperature.
To be on the safer side, we recommend you use your infrared thermometer to measure the oven’s temperature without getting too close to ensure you don’t hurt yourself trying to clean your brick oven.
Notice Some Debris? Clean Immediately
Whenever you come across some dirt or debris, always clean it – why? You don’t want this debris to accumulate in your oven as it might catch fire or ruin the quality of your food. Besides, it’s unsafe and healthy to have debris lying in your cooking device.
How to Clean a Brick Pizza Oven?
Unlike stainless steel models, Brick ovens do not require cleaning the exterior. This type of oven is built from stones and bricks that won’t rust or show dirt easily.
While it might not require frequent cleaning, it’s essential to constantly cure your stone or brick oven often to prevent cracks from occurring.
The leading cause of cracks in a stone oven is when you permit water to accumulate and then set the device at high temperatures.
Therefore, it’s important to cure your stone oven now and again to remove moisture and guarantee an extended lifespan. The curing process is vital either for new or old brick pizza ovens, especially for brick pizza ovens left outdoors at the mercy of weather conditions.
When it comes to curing your masonry oven, there are two methods. The first method includes building a fire in the middle of the dome. With the heat at the center, the heat disperses uniformly throughout the dome without heating the base resulting in damage.
Also, you might want to leave the door a tad open for proper airflow and ensure the heat isn’t extreme to cause cracks. Keep the fire burning for about six hours and below 300 degrees F for safe curing.
The other method entails using hot coal to create an external heat source to cure your stone oven. This method is best practiced for curing your outdoor oven for the first time.
Final Tip on Cleaning a Brick Pizza Oven
You want to keep the heat at a lower temperature for about an hour during humid weather before increasing the heat level. Also, you want to stick with this practice; the masonry oven has been left outdoors for a long time. Ramping up the heat quickly is one of the major causes of cracks in a brick pizza oven.
Equally important, you should always cover the brick oven, especially if you’ll be leaving it outdoors. This practice is highly recommended to extend its lifespan and improve its overall efficiency.